The Forbidden Purple City

by Philip Huynh

Nine beautifully crafted stories from rising star Philip Huynh.

A stunning story collection from a fierce new talent who writes with both assurance and vulnerability.

A man returns to Hoi An in his retirement to compose a poem honouring his parents. Two teenagers, ostracized in a private school, forge an unlikely bond. A son discovers the truth about his father's business ventures and his dreams of success. A young bride, isolated on a remote island with her new husband, finds community in a group of abalone divers.

Taking the title for his debut collection of short fiction from the walled palace of Vietnam's Nguyen dynasty, Philip Huynh dives headfirst into the Vietnamese diaspora. In these beautifully crafted stories, crystalline in their clarity and immersive in their intensity, he creates a universe inhabited by the deprivations of war, the reinvention of self in a new and unfamiliar settings, and the tensions between old-world parents and new-world children. Rooted in history and tradition yet startlingly contemporary in their approach, Huynh's stories are sensuously evocative, plunging us into worlds so all-encompassing that we can smell the scent of orange blossoms and hear the rumble of bass lines from suburban car stereos.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Canada

189 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Nancy Gillies · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hadn’t read a collection of short stories for quite some time but reading Philip Huynh’s debut book reminded me of what I like about them so much. His writing is precise and spare, and when the stories reached their conclusion, they often left me wanting more. The majority of Huynh’s characters are Vietnamese; many are struggling to fit into their current environment, feeling the effects of cultural and familial influences. The two stories I liked best were “Gulliver’s Wife” and “The Tale of Jude,” the former because of its subtle but pervasive undercurrent of tension and the latter because its private school setting and alienated high school characters ring true.

[Jim Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stories that had a different perspective, perhaps due to the writer being a first generation Vietnamese Canadian. Fascinating writing.

[Sasha Boersma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful collection of stories that we rarely see in Canadian literature. Other than the final story (which just didn’t work for me), the collection was deep and complex about the Vietnamese-Canadian experience.

[Enid Wray · Rating 4 out of 5]

An(other) interesting and complex collection of short stories, this time exploring life, family and community in Vietnam and Vancouver.

Huynh’s writing is fluid and engaging. His characters are well developed and relatable. I usually only think of world-building with respect to fantasy and sci-fi, but in these stories Huynh creates the world as it exists in Vietnam and takes the reader there.

And being a debut collection, this is a particularly impressive accomplishment. I liked it so much that I wanted to know more about him, and perhaps where he was coming from with respect to this collection. I found an interesting interview with him at Event magazine… well worth the read.

https://www.eventmagazine.ca/2019/03/...

I look forward to what he has to offer next.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty solid collection of short stories, and I loved how many were set in or referred to Vancouver. The story that gives this book its title was actually one of the lesser compelling ones to me, and I am curious about why this one was chosen as the title story - perhaps because it evokes a past in Vietnam that cannot be reclaimed due to war and time? My favorite stories were Gulliver's Wife, The Tale of Jude, Turkey Day, Mayfly, and The Abalone Diver (the last one set on Jeju island in Korea).

[Digitally Lit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ariela: The Forbidden Purple City is a short story collection which follows the stories of many different Vietnamese characters. Most of the characters are Vietnamese living in Canada, mostly Vancouver, and I really liked how the two countries were connected through these short stories. Personally, I don’t really like to write short stories because I like being able to give my readers some sort of context to the story that I’m writing about, rather than write a little piece of what could be a bigger story, But short stories are like dreams, you only get a little bit of the story until it ends, or you wake up.

With dreams you don’t need context, you’re just immersed in your own mind. Short stories are the same, and while I might not like to write them, I sure love reading them. In this book, it reminded just why I love little snippets of stories so much. Vietnam is a country that I loved visiting, and getting to read about Vietnamese characters living in Canada, and the hardships that some might face living abroad was a really meaningful learning experience for me. I loved every single short story in this book, because each one was well-written and told from a perspective different from the last.

With short stories, everything is need-to-know only, you need to be able to fit as much as possible in your little story, and I really liked that there was no infodumping, or over explaining anything. It wasn’t until I started writing this review that we didn’t even get to know the main character’s name for most of the stories. One more thing before I end this review, everything was very vivid and it was very easy for me to picture what was happening. Maybe the fact that I’m been to Vietnam helped me to picture its streets and its landmarks, but everything was well described. Obviously I really liked the book, and while I’m sure children could appreciate it’s stories, I think its more suited for older audiences.

[b · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fine literary short fiction. Attentive patterning, masterful handling of great stretches of time / life-experiences, and strong poetic endings time and time again. I’m honestly shocked this is a Goose Lane title and not from a much bigger house (I love GL with all my heart though!), too that this is a d e b u t !!! One of those magical books where you can go thru a story simply marking it up for POV, transitions, elegant and startling lines, &c., transparent in all its whirring mechanisms of craft, rich and yielding. The kind of fiction that puts the bloated terroir/terror that is “the novel” to bed without apology, asserting just why the short story is the best venue for potentialities of taste / style / energy in contemporary prose.

“He will take home none of this as he changes into his jeans and T-shirt for the bus ride home. T-shirts that show off his biceps hung on a slim frame, like rats on a spit” (57).

[Zilla Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful depiction of the Vietnamese diaspora, with stories set in Vietnam, South Korea, Vancouver, and Winnipeg. I appreciate the variety of stories: there is first person point of view, second person point of view, and third person point of view. There are stories of success - a young Vietnamese lawyer in New York - and of struggle - a neglected white youth joins a Vietnamese gang. There are young people - teenagers being bullied at a private school - and older ones - a former refugee returns home, another one continues life after the death of his close friend and fellow refugee.

My favourite story is The Tale of Jude, about the budding friendship between two bullied teens - a student of Vietnamese descent in receipt of a math scholarship to an exclusive private school, and the daughter of a wealthy alumnus donor to the school. I love how Hunyh can capture both realities so succinctly. I also appreciate the length and substantiveness of this collection.

[J.P. Letkemann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read most of this collection while convalescing from a back injury. These stories felt like a gift— little bursts of pleasure during an otherwise grim time. The prose was elegant. And there was real substance here—the stories were not vignettes, but more novelistic in scope. Huynh has a knack for arresting images. Mandarin oranges harvested after a snowfall. Monkeys casting cat-like shadows through a stain-glass window, during a wedding ceremony. I found the final story, “The Abalone Diver,” particularly exhilarating. I’m excited to read future work by this author.

[Robert Costanzo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rich collection of captivating short stories masterfully written by Huynh.

[Francis-Adrien Morneault · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories are highly engaging, and the sparse prose is powerful. I love the various perspectives offered in these stories about Canada and Vietnam. Excellent work!